Moonfall Movie Review: Mindlessly Idiotic Sci-fi

A still from Moonlight

Moonfall
Dir: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Charlie Plummer
Rating: 2/5

German filmmaker with blockbuster credentials, Roland Emmerich of the ‘Disaster-opus' oeuvre, challenges his avowed mass attraction technique with a sci-fi outing that postulates the fragmentation of the Moon which in turn threatens the very existence of the earth.

He expects us to believe in the fiction that a mysterious force has knocked the moon from its orbit around Earth, sending it on a life extinguishing collision course with our planet. Don't expect a roller-coaster ride - just be happy if you get some laughs out of the pseudo-astronomy posing as apocalyptic science fiction here. "Moonfall" intends to depict the horrors wreaked by the out-of-sync Moon dumping debris and eventually crashing into Earth. While the escapism depicted here is fun for a bit, much of it seems stupid, wacky, and totally off-kilter. Its ludicrous science gains potency as one of the dumbest ever fictional premises sold in Hollywood.

‘Moonfall' brings together Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson as NASA employees Jocinda Fowl and Brian Harper while Game of Thrones star John Bradley as wannabe doctor and maths wiz, KC Houseman, takes up the principal leads while Michael Pena and Donald Sutherland play out in the fringes.

The narrative stretches your imagination to unbelievable, messing up crucial physics theory in an attempt to cobble up a saving-the-world in the nick-of-time endplay. Unfortunately, it's not one that works. The narrative is executed rather perfunctorily, is devoid of high-end CGI, and is rather bland and unimaginative. A dippy script, cringe-worthy performances, and ridiculous plotting make its two-hour-plus runtime rather enervating. It's nowhere close to being a decent entertainer.